USA > Connecticut > The Connecticut River and the valley of the Connecticut, three hundred and fifty miles from mountain to sea; historical and descriptive > Part 31
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The opening act of Shays's Rebellion was more success- ful than the Ely raid. The demonstration was made in August, 1786, four days after the convention of fifty towns at Hatfield, at which the formidable list of grievances was adopted. It was to prevent the sitting of the Court of General Sessions. The insurgents - or "regulators," as the participators in the Shays's Rebellion called themselves - were said to number fully fifteen hundred. They were armed some with muskets, some with bludgeons, others with swords. They paraded "with drums beating and fifes playing," and held possession of the Court House till midnight. Then, their design accomplished with ease, they quietly dispersed.
The scenes were next shifted to other parts of the com- monwealth, those in the Valley centering about Spring- field. The last acts in Northampton took place in the spring and summer of 1787. The trial of the bunch of captured leaders was held before the Supreme Judicial Court sitting in the meeting-house, and continued through twelve April days. The execution of the two of the six condemned to death who were denied a pardon, - Jason Parmenter of Bernardston and Henry McCullock of Pelham, - was first appointed for the twenty-fourth of May, and the gallows were got ready for them ; but on the twenty-third they were reprieved for four weeks. On June 21, the fateful day, no further reprieve being looked
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for by the populace, crowds flocked into the town, some from quite distant parts, to witness the promised spectacle.
First came the march of the prisoners with their mili- tary guard from the jail on Pleasant Street to the meeting- house, there to suffer the then customary infliction of a public sermon to the condemned. Since the edifice would hold but a fraction of the assemblage, the prisoners and the troops were lined up in the street in front and the services were conducted from one of the windows. There was a prayer by one parson, the Rev. Enoch Hale of Westhamp- ton, and the sermon by another, the Rev. Mr. Baldwin of Palmer. The preacher's text was from Romans vii, 21: "I find then a law that, when I would do good, evil is present with me." These services over, the solemn march was resumed, and the procession moved slowly along the thronged streets to Pancake Hill, the soldiers escorting the high sheriff and his deputies, and the prisoners under a double guard. At the foot of the gallows positions were taken, and when apparently the final moment had come and the multitude were agape with expectation, the high sheriff stepped forward and produced the reprieve. It was a great disappointment to many in the audience, as was recorded in more than one diary of the day. However, the prisoners were returned to the jail, and hopes were indulged by the disappointed that the spectacle was only postponed. But they were respited two times more, and finally were pardoned with the convicted leaders in other parts.
The original buildings of Smith College occupied the homesteads of two judges which formerly stood side by side, with fine mansion-houses set in gardens. Here the college, founded by a maiden lady with her fortune of three hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, on broad
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Smith College-View across the Campus.
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and definite lines of her own devising, was begun in 1874 with a single building for collegiate purposes, and a few comfortable dwellings for students' homes, instead of the usual dormitory, grouped about it, the second strictly woman's college then established in the country. Now the institution, with a property value of nearly two and a quarter millions, comprises a cluster of nine college build- ings and thirteen dwelling-houses, spreading over beautiful estates in the heart of the city, and contributing largely to its importance. Meeting with fine competence Miss Maria Smith's design, as expressed in her will, to provide an education " suited to the mental and physical wants of women," and equal to that afforded to men, "not to ren- der the sex any the less feminine but to develop as fully as may be the powers of womankind," Smith continues admirably to maintain a foremost position in her sphere which she took at the beginning. The youngest of the establishments in this favored educational centre, - which includes, within a radius of seven miles of Northampton, Amherst College at Amherst, the Massachusetts Agricul- tural College at North Amherst, Mount Holyoke College at South Hadley, and Williston Seminary at Easthampton, - Smith ranks with the highest. Kindred but independ- ent institutions are the Home Culture Clubs, established in handsome and well equipped houses of their own, a generous and practical enterprise of Mr. Cable for the wholesome betterment of the community. Also several free libraries of excellent standard endowed by prosperous citizens.
In the rural section of the city called "Paradise " are choice homes, among them Cable's "Tarryawhile " on the banks of Mill River, the stream which flows through the city - a picturesque feature in the landscape, and upon
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the placid waters of which the Smith girls row and paddle their light canoes. Farther out on Mill river is the district of Florence, now a centre of silk manufacture, which was early begun in the Valley. In the late eighteen-thirties, when the wild "mulberry speculation " swept through the land, with the accompanying disastrous efforts at silk- worm culture, this hamlet was one vast mulberry-leaf nurs- ery, a single cultivator, Samuel Whitmarsh, having some five hundred acres planted with mulberry trees. In the for- ties the place was selected for the third attempt in New Eng- land at the establishment of a Fourierian " community " (following those at Brook Farm and at Hopedale). It was a joint stock concern under the title of the "North- ampton Association of Education and Industry "; and committed to no creed, its adherents were facetiously dubbed "Nothingarians."
Mounts Tom and Holyoke are both accessible by cars, and afford from their summits enchanting views. The prospect spread out from Mount Holyoke constitutes the more extensive panorama over the rich alluvial Valley. In it the observer has " the grand and beautiful united, the lat- ter, however, greatly predominating " to-day, as sixty years ago, when President Hitchcock first adequately described it in his Sketch of the Scenery of Massachusetts included in his official geological reports. The changes made in the decades only heighten its distinguished charm. Looking down upon the lovely plain a thousand feet below, now as then the object that " most of all arrests the attention of the man of taste," is the River, winding its way " majes- tically yet most beautifully." Mount Tom is now a public reservation, and it is kept ever fresh in current literature by Gerald Stanley Lee, through his chapbook outdoor mag- azine " devoted to rest and worship, and to a little look-off
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Smith College Commencement, 1905, Ivy Day. From a photograph by Miss Katherine E. McClellan, Northampton.
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on the world." The tradition of the naming of these heights as first printed by Dr. Holland in his History of Western Massachusetts, is dismissed by the later historian of Northampton, James Russell Trumbull, as a "fanciful and poetical legend," since he finds the origin of " Mount Tom " in doubt, while "Mount Holyoke," although evi- dently perpetuating the memory of the pioneer Elizur Holyoke, of Springfield, is not mentioned in the Northamp- ton records before 1664. Holland's legend is so picturesque, however, that it will stand in popular history :
.... Some five or six years after the settlement of Springfield, a company of the planters went northward to explore the country. One party, headed by Elizur Holyoke, went up on the east side of the River, and another, headed by Rowland Thomas, went up on the west side. The parties arriving abreast at the narrow place in the River below Hockanum, at what is now called Rock Ferry, Holyoke and Thomas held a conversation with one another across the River, and each then and there gave his own name to the mountain at whose feet he stood. The name of Holyoke remains uncorrupted and without abbreviation, while that of Thomas has been curtailed to simple and homely 'Tom.'
Amherst and South Hadley were both parts of Old Hadley till 1775. Both are properly dominated by their colleges : Amherst on its commanding hill overlooking lovely views along the Valley, and Mount Holyoke College on its eleva- tion equally rich in prospects. The two historic institu- tions have a sentimental relation : for Mary Lyon, the founder of Mount Holyoke Seminary, and a pioneer in the higher training of women, was a pupil at Amherst during its first years, when it was coeducational.
In Holyoke on the west side of the River and Chicopee on the east side we are within the original limits of Spring- field. So late as 1850 what is now the " Paper City " was
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a precinct of rural West Springfield (itself a part of Spring- field till 1774) ; and Chicopee had been only two years set off from Springfield as a separate municipality. Holyoke, at about the time of its incorporation, was a place of farms, one small cotton mill, and a few houses, and was known as " Ireland Parish," a name suggestive of Irish origin ; which it was, for the first settlement of this territory was begun, prior to 1745, by a venturesome family of Rileys. Chicopee was a more ancient plantation, the hamlet having been started within four years of Springfield's beginning. The pioneers here were Henry and Japhet Chapin, two of the four sons of Deacon Samuel Chapin, one of Springfield's " first men," whose effigy appears in St. Gaudens's statue of " The Puritan," in Springfield. These Chapin brothers had numerous offspring, and Holland states that for a long period almost the entire population living in the present territory of Chicopee were their descendants or connections. It was Japhet's daughter Hannah who became the bride of young John Sheldon of Deerfield and went so heroically through the cruel experiences of the Sack of 1704.
Holyoke was created with the development of the water-power of Hadley Falls on a systematic scale, under- taken in the late eighteen-forties. The utilization of this power had begun a couple of decades earlier when a Hadley Falls Company erected a wing-dam to supply power to a single cotton-mill.' The larger promoters came in with plans fully matured for the establishment at once of an important manufacturing centre. First the necessary lands were obtained from the farmers by an affable and shrewd agent, who was careful not to declare the real object of the purchase; and finally a new Hadley Falls Company, with Perkinses, Lymans, and Dwights, names
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The Railroad up Mount Tom.
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conspicuously associated with New England manufacturing development of that day, among the corporators, duly appeared for business. The construction of a dam complete- ly across the River was completed in the autumn of 1848, the greatest water-power then known to history. On the day appointed for its inauguration throngs gathered on the river-banks and the neighboring bluffs to see the show. They witnessed instead a catastrophe. The story is full told in these despatches telegraphed to the head office in Boston :
10 A. M. Gates just closed ; water filling behind dam.
12 M. Dam leaking badly.
2 P. M. Stones of bulkhead giving way to pressure.
3.20 P. M. Your old dam's gone.
The huge mass of lumber, stone, and earth had been wrenched from its foundations, and rushed pell-mell down stream on the great wave, rolling over and over, and break- ing into fragments.
In the following spring a second structure was planned on a more scientific basis, and the building of it begun under the direction of a West Point-trained engineer. This work proved as brilliant a success as the first a dismal fail- ure. Upon its completion, in October, 1849, a greater throng than on the previous occasion gathered to witness its test ; and when it was seen to withstand the pressure effectually, and the water at full head " poured down the perpendicular face in an unbroken sheet," a great cheer from six thousand throats mingled with the music of the fall. With this achievement Holyoke's actual beginning dates. The town full-fledged was incorporated in March, 1850, and Holyoke was taken for its name as a proper compliment alike to the worthy Elizur Holyoke and to the
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neighboring mount. By 1851 the new Hadley Falls Com- pany had two good-sized cotton-mills running. Two years later the pioneer paper mills were established. The fol- lowing year more and larger cotton mills were added to the increasing groups of factories. Then came a temporary halt in the town's progress with the hard times of 1857, and a financial crisis in the affairs of the Hadley Falls Company. After, however, that corporation had been suc- ceeded by the Holyoke Water Company, composed of the same class of manufacturing developers, a period of ex- pansion set in which has continued unchecked. By 1873 the town had become a city. It is now the third in popu- lation of the River cities. It obtained its title of the " Paper City " by virtue of its fine paper-making concerns which early outnumbered any other single class of manu- factures in the place.
But chief of all the numerous things interesting in this now highly developed manufacturing centre are the per- fected hydraulic works. The present dam, a twentieth century affair, erected in 1904, is a splendid construction of solid masonry. He who will have statistics is told that it is ten hundred and twenty feet long between the abut- ments, thirty-eight feet high, fifteen feet thick five feet below the crest, and thirty-four feet wide at the base. There is the great gate-house under which springs the water that generates from twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand horsepower ; with the twelve huge gates operated within the house by a water-wheel. And finally there is the grand canal system : the receiving canal, stone-walled, running from the bulkhead of the dam ; the first or upper level canal, extending through the heart of the city for a mile and a quarter ; the second level, paralleling the first, then, sweeping around, following generally the River bend;
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The Dam at Holyoke.
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and the third level, carrying its water to many mills in the south part of the city along the River bank. The city's streets are laid out in relation to the canal system. There are public squares, parks for the people, and pleasant resi- dential parts in the highlands.
Chicopee is an older manufacturing centre than Holyoke as well as an older settlement. When it was yet the Chicopee precinct of Springfield it comprised a succession of manufacturing villages along the Chicopee River. Mills appeared with the early utilization of the power of the Chicopee and its tributaries. Iron-works, established at the close of the Revolution, were the earliest industries at Chicopee Falls, and to supply the furnace bog ore was taken from the neighboring river banks. Following the iron work came paper manufacture. The fuller devel- opment of the water-power began in the eighteen-twenties with the incorporation of a water-power and manu- facturing company. Then cotton factories made their appearance. In these enterprises were Dwights and Cha- pins, associated with other large-minded Springfield and Boston men. A little later a concern which had been man- ufacturing edge-tools in the town of Chelmsford since 1791 moved to Chicopee Falls, and began making swords for the United States government. This was the beginning at Chicopee of the interesting works where so much Ameri- can statuary has been turned out in bronze and where other bronze works of art are made. In the eighteen- thirties the manufacture of bronze cannon was begun at these works ; in the fifties, machinery for the Springfield and Harper's Ferry arsenals.
Springfield has long been celebrated as the seat of the oldest United States Armory, of highly developed indus- tries, and of the Springfield Republican. It has been the
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commercial centre of the Valley in Massachusetts since the day of William Pynchon the founder, and has steadily maintained its supremacy as the metropolis of inland Massachusetts, rivaling Hartford below. It has been pro- lific in men of force and intellectual capacity. Its charms as a city are its uplands commanding broad views of the superb sweep of the River at this point; wide, shaded streets ; noble elms in the older parts ; trim lawns ; a mul- titude of comfortable, home-like dwellings ; a generous area of parks; a happy blending of town and country ; no dismal tenement blocks; the blessings of light and air open to all, and with them more of the conveniences of city life than are to be found in most American cities of seventy thousand inhabitants. This is the attractive picture which the Republican has drawn in one of its descriptive articles. Add to it a fringe of romantic outlying country, with a rich historical background, and the sketch is indeed that of " a pleasant place in which to visit or to make a home."
The city is built on what was a sandy plain back and above the meadows which bordered the River, and on a series of terraces terminating in a plateau two hundred feet above the River's level, and stretching off for several miles to the eastward. The business centre is yet on and about the single long street of the original settlement, now Main Street, parallel with the River. The older residential parts occupy the rising ground above the main street, on streets running parallel with it, or following "free and pleasing curves "; and in other directions overlooking the Valley. The once beautiful River front is spoiled through its occupation by railroad tracks and structures of unlovely industries. But all this is now to be reformed through the reclamation by the city of the whole front, and its
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Holyoke-Looking North from the City Hall.
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transformation into a splendid riverside parkway and drive. This really magnificent project involves, among other clearances, the shifting of the railroad tracks across the River to the west side, and the building of great new bridges.
Four bridges now span the River within the reach of two and a half miles. Three of them are highway bridges, of which the most picturesque and the least convenient is the " Old Toll Bridge," - a toll-bridge in name only now. The others, modern iron structures, afford the best views up and down the River at present to be had at the water front. The " Old Toll Bridge " is a successor of the first bridge built in the Massachusetts Reach, which was erected in 1805 after years of agitation and considerable ridicule of the scheme by local wiseheads. "Parson Howard talks like a fool," ejaculated one town leader when the minister was advocating it in 1787. " Gentlemen, you might as well undertake to bridge the Atlantic," solemnly declared another when the project was maturing. A fund to meet its cost was raised by a lottery. Its completion was the occasion of a great celebration, and on the Sunday follow- ing the event Parson Lathrop of West Springfield preached a sermon upon it, the pious theme of which was the " con- vincing evidence" that the structure suggested of "the existence and government of a deity, and also of the importance of civil society and of a firm and steady gov- ernment."
Court square is the historical centre. Here clustered the meeting-house, the taverns, the court-house, the stocks, and the whipping-post of colonial days. And here was the scene of the later outbreaks in the Valley of Shays's Rebel- lion, followed shortly after by the " battle " back on Armory Hill, which practically overthrew that insurrection.
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The first of these demonstrations, in September, 1786, was directed against the Supreme Judicial Court to prevent its sitting, and thereby head off the indictment of insur- gent leaders by the grand jury which reported to this court. The insurgents were now a little army, well organ- ized, and containing many old soldiers of the Revolution. Daniel Shays himself, a farmer of Pelham, the town next east of Amherst, had been a captain in the Continental army, conspicuous for personal bravery at Bunker Hill and at Stony Point. The government men were prepared for their coming, and when they arrived they were confronted by a military force in possession of the court-house, com- manded by General William Shepard of Westfield, a Rev- olutionary officer of excellent record. These opposing forces faced each other for three days, and a conflict was averted only through the forbearance of the leaders on both sides. Under General Shepard's protection the court was enabled to sit through the three days, but its sessions were merely formal. No meeting of the grand jury took place and consequently no indictments issued. So the victory was practically with the insurgents. Meanwhile they had executed various "bold measures" before the court-house. When a rumor winged among them that they would not be permitted to march by the building, they announced their intention of so doing "forthwith." Accordingly, with military precision and muskets loaded for action, they marched and countermarched directly beneath the court-house windows; but the government men declined to take up their challenge.
The next demonstration was in December and was short and decisive. Shays with other leaders unexpectedly marched into the town and, assembling several hundred malcontents, proceeded to occupy the court-house and post
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City Library and Art Museum, Springfield.
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guards at the entrances, before a body could be organized for resistance, thus preventing a session of the court of common pleas. Their object effected they marched off.
The " battle " on Armory Hill came in January. The insurgent leaders had determined to concentrate their forces at Springfield and try the issue with the capture of the Federal arsenal. Luke Day, a West Springfield leader, had collected there a well-drilled force of four hundred men ready to cross the River on the ice. At Chicopee was Eli Parsons, a Berkshire leader, with a similar force. Shays was to march from the eastward with the main army of twelve hundred men. Anticipating these movements, Gen- eral Shepard with eleven hundred militiamen had taken possession of the arsenal and had planted a cannon com- manding the approaches from the Boston road, - the old Bay Path. General Benjamin Lincoln, chief of an army recently raised by the state to quell the rebellion, was making a forced march up from Worcester over the snowy roads with a body of infantry, horse, and artillery. Shays's plan was to reach Springfield ahead of Lincoln and seize the arsenal before Shepard could be reinforced. The first part only of his programme was successfully carried out. When he had reached Wilbraham, the town next east of Springfield, he despatched a message to Day requesting his cooperation in an attack on the next day, the twenty-fifth. Day wrote that he would be ready for the twenty-sixth. This reply was intercepted with the arrest of the messenger and went to Shepard instead of to Shays. Shepard also got word of Shays's movements by Asaph King, a deputy sheriff, who brought the news from Wilbraham, post haste, pushing on horseback through the snowdrifts and across fields, - the Paul Revere of this rebellion.
Toward the close of the twenty-fifth, Shays with his
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army was sighted slowly toiling along the snow-covered Boston road. At this time part of Shepard's troops were posted back in the village, on the main street, to hold Day in check. Shays's army approached in battle array, marching in an open column by platoons. Shepard sent out messengers to ask " what he was after." The reply came back : " Barracks, barracks, he would have, and stores." Shepard retorted that "he must purchase them dear if he would have them." When within two hundred and fifty yards of the arsenal Shays came to a halt. He was warned not to march any nearer "on his peril." At this the march was instantly resumed, Shays leading his men with a confident air, supposing that Day was cooper- ating from the west side. Shepard ordered his artillery to open fire. The first two shots were aimed to overshoot them. Still they pressed on. Then the fire was directed straight through the centre of the column, and they broke into the utmost confusion. Shays made a gallant but vain attempt to rally them. Three lay dead in the snow in the road, and one mortally wounded. The proud army retreated precipitately, not stopping till Ludlow was reached, ten miles away. On the following day Shays, with his force reduced by two hundred who had deserted, succeeded in making a junction with Parsons at Chicopee. The next day General Lincoln arrived with his troops. Then, after only a brief show of opposition, all the insurgent forces were routed. Fleeing up the Valley they made their hard way to Amherst and thence to Shays's home- town of Pelham. Hadley became Lincoln's temporary headquarters. The crushing of the rebellion was not fully accomplished till some months later, but the insurgents were finally clear of the Valley. Shays after his pardon lived peacefully till his death in old age, his home latterly
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